1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to merchant offers and, more specifically, to offer-discovery systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Offer-discovery systems provide a service by which merchants inform customers of offers, for example, deals (e.g., discounts, favorable shipping terms, or rebates) or coupons (e.g., printable coupons for in-store use or coupon codes for use online). Typically, these systems store information about offers from a relatively large number of merchants and provide an interface by which customers can identify offers in which the customer is likely to be interested. Merchants have found the offer-discovery systems to be a relatively effective form of marketing, as cost-sensitive consumers are drawn to such systems due to their relatively comprehensive listings of offers, and as a result, the number of offers listed on such systems has increased in recent years. One consequence of this increase is that users (e.g., prospective customers of the merchants) face an increasingly complex task of identifying relevant offers on offer-discovery systems and recalling information about the offer when making a purchase. Moreover, such tasks are especially challenging for in-store offers that may depend on a user's proximity to a merchant's facility for relevancy and use.
A related problem faced by consumers is remembering to use offers that they (or others) have identified in the past, whether redeemable online or in-store. For example, often a consumer will browse or search for offers using their cell phone or other mobile device when the user has a few free minutes, for instance, while waiting for an appointment. The user may identify offers that they or others might find useful, but often the user does not wish to redeem the offer at that time on their mobile device, typically for any of a number of reasons. It is frequently easier to redeem offers on devices with larger display screens and, in some cases, physical keyboards relative to the ease with which offers can be redeemed on mobile devices. Or an offer may have geographic-use restrictions or be an in-store only offers redeemable at a merchant's physical site.
Frequently, however, users forget to redeem offers, when at the store, or near their home or work desktop or laptop computer. Moreover, the challenge of remembering offers is expected to increase as consumers add more and different types of devices to the lives upon which they may discover offers in other locations, and as merchants issue increasing numbers of offers with increasingly complex sets of redemption constraints.
Another issue faced by operators of offer-discovery systems is that, as such entities continue the newly developing trend to increase their base of local and location-relevant content (e.g., offers for local stores, such as stores within a threshold distance, like within 25 or 50 miles for users that are likely driving or within one mile for users that are likely walking), it is becoming more important to get relatively fine grained location information (e.g., within 100 meters approximately of their location when providing offers to which the user might walk) about where a consumer is located. In a mobile application, that signal can be received through GPS, WiFi™, Bluetooth™ beacon identifiers associated in memory with a geolocations (e.g., in a key-value store that can be queried) and other techniques. However, for users of desktop (or other non-mobile) user interfaces, location data is often much more difficult to get at a sufficiently granular level. In some cases, operators are forced to rely on less reliable signals, like IP address, which often only provide low-resolution geolocation information (e.g., at the level of zip code or city).